I got a shock. Shivers went down my back. What vulgar creature could this be who had dared to make so free with the purest-minded and least vulgar boy in all the world? Who was she that had taken advantage of him like this, just because he was at large and in khaki?
CHAPTER V GOOD DAYS AND GOOD NIGHTS
I know exactly the kind of woman this is.
Even in my indignation, I could not help half-smiling as I remembered certain angry complaints made by a fashionable mother whom I had met at a War charity meeting.
"It really is a shame that you can't let your fresh-minded boy go out into the world without his coming across snare-laying women," she had burst out confidentially. "The poor silly fellows get quite led astray by some of these girls that they meet where they're billeted—shoddy girls with a cheap prettiness and cheap little openwork stockings and flashy haircombs, and imitation jewellery, and no minds or souls. You know the sort. They're always hankering after small outings and excitements, and, of course, they would all like to catch baby second lieutenants, who may one day be something in the world."
She had been so much upset, this fashionable mother, that I knew she must have suffered.
"What a pity that this 'Queenie' of Hammersmith doesn't know better when she's wasting her time!" I thought. "Why couldn't she see that her 'Roly' might love a woman a hundred times worse than she is, but he wouldn't love her? Anyhow, he ought to have burnt her silly letter. I will see that he burns it when he comes back. I will not have such stuff defiling this consecrated room.... And yet—I wonder if it is the same charm in him that makes both Queenie and me adore him!"
For it was certainly not because he was my son that I was wrapped up in him.